It’s a fact of life that communities of color and low-income communities suffer the worst environmental damage. Urban planner Greg Watson, physician Martha Arguello, and activist and scholar Carl Anthony show how these communities have found practical ways to reclaim the health and wellbeing of both their places and their health.
Honoring the Heritage of Black Farmers: On the Land | J.L. Chestnut
Black farmers have been leaving the land at three and a half times the rate of other farmers. It turns out that this loss of black farmers is due less to farming policies and practices than it is to generations of institutional racism. Civil Rights attorney J.L. Chestnut, in a brilliant and emotional speech, tells the story of the successful historic litigation against the USDA on behalf of these farmers.
A Sense of Wonder: Ecological Literacy and the Facts of Life | Fritjof Capra, Zenobia Barlow and Esther Cook
Does our very survival now depend on our ability to understand the facts of life – nature’s operating instructions – and how to live by them? Join the Center for Ecoliteracy’s Fritjof Capra, Zenobia Barlow and Esther Cook to learn how experiential, participatory education in the environment is revolutionizing education from kindergarten through high school through an education of the heart. (pic from rawpixel.com)
Heart To Heart – Womens Leadership In Transforming Culture | Sarah Crowell, Joanna Macy, Susan Griffin, Sofia Quintero, and Akaya Windwood
All too often, there’s a disconnect between how women are portrayed in popular culture and the media, and how women see and portray themselves. Sarah Crowell, Joanna Macy, Susan Griffin, Sofia Quintero and Akaya Windwood take apart gender politics and put them back together with an emotional intelligence that is shifting the definition of power and fostering new models of women’s leadership.
Light at the Crossroads: Environment Meets Social Justice | Van Jones
Environmental destruction leads to scarcity and scarcity leads to conflict, so restoring the environment is key to peace. Yet those working for the environment and those working for social justice have not linked arms until recently. Van Jones invites us to bring down the social walls that we ourselves have built, and work together to counter the timeworn strategy of divide and conquer that benefits ruling elites.
The Wonders of Gaia: Nature is Symbiotic | Lynn Margulis, Wade Davis & Paul Stamets
“Why plant a garden when you can put plants to work for you in your own body?” This is one of the mind bending questions Lynn Margulis, one of the greatest cross-disciplinary scientific thinkers and educators of our epoch, asks. Margulis, ethnobotanist Wade Davis and mycologist Paul Stamets weave tales of amazing plant intelligence like the “Hat Thrower Mushroom” and animals that eat light.
Forest Lifeboat: From Spirit Bears to Victoria’s Dirty Secret | Tzeporah Berman
How do you go from being a passionate tree-hugger to a business-suited change-maker on behalf of the forests? Enter ForestEthics Program Director Tzeporah Berman. With a string of conservation successes, including the “Amazon of the North,” her inspiring story shows how innovative market-based strategies, strange bedfellows, and public embarrassment are powerful tools to preserve the wild places that provide our essential ecosystem services.
You Are Where You Eat: Trans-farming Urban Food and Growing Community | Ladonna Redmond…
LaDonna Redmond and Wil Bullock live in communities where 12-year-olds suffer heart attacks, and where it’s easier to buy a semi-automatic weapon than an organic tomato. But they are changing that reality, providing access to fresh, healthy foods, and re-establishing the connections between food and community.
The Art of Relationships: From Ecology to Healing | Fritjof Capra, Jeannette Armstrong, and Jeanne Achterberg
Ecology is the superb art of interdependent relationships. Author and physicist Fritjof Capra, Native American educator Jeannette Armstrong, and medical researcher Jeanne Achterberg describe the complex and interconnected relationships inherent in living systems that can help heal our environment, our societies, and us.
Aligning Business with Biology: Breakthrough Eco-nomics | Amory Lovins & Jason Clay
Bioneers are successfully employing the economics of nature to demonstrate how we can solve two of our most intractable environmental challenges: energy and agriculture. In a few decades, the U.S. can get completely off oil, as physicist Amory Lovins convincingly shows. Economist and anthropologist Jason Clay presents profitable examples of modeling nature’s economics, from clean shrimp farms in Asia to healthy potatoes in Wisconsin.
How Close Does It Have to Get? The Open Space of Democracy | Terry Tempest Williams
In her writing and her life, Terry Tempest Williams expresses something better and higher in each of us. Here she wrestles with the question: “What are you willing to die for?” She weaves stories of personal loss and triumph that illuminate the idea that, perhaps, in the end, democracy is about listening – deeply, openly, even with a broken heart. Because, she says, the heart is the first home of democracy.
Terry Tempest Williams is a best-selling author, conservationist and activist. A native of Utah, her writing is rooted in the American West and ranges from issues of wilderness conservation, to women’s health, to exploring our relationship to culture and our natural landscape. To learn more about her work, visit her website: http://www.coyoteclan.com/
The End of Sustainability: The Environment as a Human Right | Paul Hawken
A healthy environment is not just a biological issue, but also a fundamental human right. Acclaimed social entrepreneur and author Paul Hawken proposes that we need to go far beyond “sustainability” as a guiding principle and dare to create a restorative economic system founded in social equity and power for all.
To find out more about what Paul Hawken is doing, visit his website.